1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to software for computer systems and networking. More specifically, the present invention relates to the accessibility of remote storage devices.
2. Description of Related Art
Disk drives, logical or physical partitions of disk drives and even file servers are all often referred to loosely as “volumes”. Computer operating systems typically have commands and procedures for “mounting” disk drives (such as floppy drives, hard drives and CD (Compact Disc) drives) to make them available to the user. On a local machine such mounting can be done once during the installation of the drive and thereafter will be accessible upon any system startup instance. Drives may also be “hot-swapped” so that they are recognized by the operating system and made available to the user instantly upon interfacing with the computer's hardware.
Over a local area network (LAN), client machines can connect to volumes hosted by servers over the LAN depending on their authentication and permissions. To connect or mount such networked volumes, one common requirement is that the client be authenticated by the server. Once so authenticated, the user must search or browse for hosted volumes, and then connect to the desired volumes often using yet another authentication procedure. For instance, on Appleshare(™), a product of Apple Computers, Inc., the client user browses the network and finds first the desired server. Then, the user clicks on the server icon and is usually required (where guest access is not enabled on the server) to again enter a username and password. Once authenticated, the user must browse and select from available volume(s). Thereafter, the selected volume(s) is(are) available on the operating system desktop of the client machine appearing as any local drive would.
One issue with typical volume mounting is the time expended. Another is that of repeating the same process the next time the same volume needs to be mounted. Any of the parameters, such as a network location, name or alias, that uniquely identify a given volume may have changed or may not be remembered by the user and must be found again. Also, there are often additional steps needed for clients that remotely “dial-in” to a given network, and then attempt to locate network resources.
There is thus a need for automating the volume mounting process.